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Dear Colleagues,

We are setting up a programme to identify and disseminate the key lessons of ISB projects.  Spreading the knowledge acquired from running innovative projects and making partnerships work should help others to design and manage their projects, and stop wheels being re-invented.      

We have made a start with the conference held on the 6 March in London and the series of workshops, which we are running around the country. We want to build on this by:

• Improving the quality and relevance of the monitoring information which we collect on each project while in progress; and
  
  
• Drawing out the key conclusions from the evaluations, which we ask to be carried out after the funding for each project, comes to an end.

This will enable us to build up a compendium of information on projects to share with other projects, and more widely in the public and private sectors. This will also help us to provide up to date information on what the programme as a whole is delivering for use in publications etc.         

A key channel for making this information available will be the ISB website which will be on-line by summer 2000. The website will hold a searchable database holding such information.   

With this in mind, we have re-designed the six monthly progress report template. The new design still asks for a report on project expenditure but in future we would like to know more about the substance of the project in terms of where it has got to in implementation and service delivery.  Please click here to download a copy of this document. 

We plan to deposit the content of each progress report (minus the financial data) onto the database without any editing. This will enable the state of play on the project and your experience in running it are available to others - in your words. (In the longer run, our aim is to let you lodge reports directly yourself.) 

However, if there are issues, which you need to share with us but are sensitive in nature, please let us know in a separate covering note.

Finally, can you please copy each progress report to your Departmental contact so that the relevant policy teams can be appraised of progress. In the case of LA projects, please copy reports to DETR, Dave Starbuck.